Jerry Eversole’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, says the feds were trying to criminalize a friendship.

The “friendship” argument apparently was a part of deliberations. At one point the jury sent Hittner a note asking, “Friendship or not, where do you draw the line to justify continuing to accept things of value (as an elected official) with someone who does business with the county?”

County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, has escaped yet again from allegations of having a rather loose interpretation of ethics rules. A federal jury could not come to a decision on whether Eversole took $100,000 in bribes from a contractor, and U.S. District Judge David Hittner declared a mistrial.

On Tuesday after the jury said it was deadlock in two notes to Judge David Hittner, a third note was then sent to the judge from the jurors, which said the areas they needed to address include:

1. Re-stating the argument that this was a conspiracy.
2. What was the relationship between Surface and Eversole from their first meeting until 1999, and did the pattern of behavior change?
3. Friendship or not, where do you draw the link to justify continuing to accept things of value (as an elected official) with someone who does business with the county?

When our legal analyst read that last question, he knew there was no hope.

“This is a hung jury. You have jurors there who bought the friendship defense, that clearly say there is a line between friendship and criminal responsibility and we don’t know where that line is,” KTRK Legal Analyst Joel Androphy said.

The judge made the announcement today, March 30, 2011, just before noon, saying he’d like for a new jury to be chosen as early as this coming week with a new trial underway in April. Attorneys, however, said they would like more time.

As for the jury and where they stood on the four counts:

- Conspiracy: 5 guilty, 7 not guilty
- Bribery: 10 guilty, 2 not guilty
- 2003 tax misstatement: 10 guilty, 2 not guilty
- 2004 tax misstatement: 7 guilty, 5 not guilty

“We all agreed he took the money — that was evident. We all agreed he used his office or his influence — the question for two of us was did he do that corruptly,” Hopkins said.

But now, both sides know a lot more about how their case played to a jury. And to the majority of jurors who voted to convict, Eversole’s acceptance of big dollar gifts, even with a friend, didn’t play well.

“I think it was ludicrous. I think the guy knows exactly what he was doing. He skirted the law,” jury foreman John Hopkins said.

“At the end of the day, 10 of us thought he was guilty on at least 2 charges. We couldn’t sway the other 2,” said “jury foreman John Hopkins.

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©Rose Turner
March 30, 2011
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Tags: $17 thousand Eversole received in landscaping, $30 thousand in antique firearms, 2003 tax misstatement 10 guilty 2 not guilty, 2004 tax misstatement 7 guilty 5 not guilty, accepting bribes, alleged bribes, and $63 thousand to pay off his mortgage, Anna Nicole Smith, Anna Nicole Smith trials, Bribery 10 guilty 2 not guilty, campaign finance violations, charged with filing false income tax returns, Chicago, cleaning up the Texas politics, Conspiracy 5 guilty 7 not guilty, County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, did the pattern of behavior change, Eversole could receive $700 thousand in fines, Eversole could receive a maximum of 21 years in prison and $700 thousand in fines, Eversole jury foreman John Hopkins, Eversole maximum 21 years in prison, fame Texas defense lawyer, fame Texas defense lawyer Rusty Hardin, federal jury, filing false income tax returns, four federal indictments, friends helping friends, Harris County Attorney Mike Driscoll, Harris County County Commissioner, High Profile Trials, hint of the good ole boys, Houston Chronicle, houstonpress.com, Howard K Stern, J. Pierce Marshall, Jerry Eversole, Jerry Eversole charged with filing false income tax returns, Jerry Eversole Harris County Commissioner, Jerry Eversole Trial, Joel Androphy, John Hopkins, Jon Lindsay, Jon Lindsay represent northern Harris County in the state Senate, Judge Sharon Keller, Judge Tony Lindsay, jury foreman John Hopkins, justify continuing to accept things of value as an elected official, KTRK, KTRK Legal Analyst, KTRK Legal Analyst Joel Androphy, Legal Analyst Joel Androphy, loose interpretation of ethics rules, Mark Jones, Michael Surface, Minneapolis, northern Harris County in the state Senate from 1996-2006, Re-stating the argument that this was a conspiracy, retired Judge Tony Lindsay, Rice University, Rice University political science chairman, Rice University political science chairman Mark Jones, Rusty Hardin, Rusty Hardin Esq., Sharon Keller fined $100 thousand by the Texas Ethics Commission, six-term Harris County Judge Jon Lindsay, Steve Sadow Esq., Texas Ethics Commission, Texas Ethics Commission fined Eversole $75 thousand, U.S. District Judge David Hittner, What was the relationship between Surface and Eversole from their first meeting until 1999, “criminalizing” a 30-year friendship

What caught my attention in this trial is that in the Houston Chronicle coverage there is mention of a lot of names that overlap all things Anna Nicole Smith trials.

At one point the Houston Chronicle says; “So how corrupt is the local scene? It all depends on what you compare it to, said Rice University political science chairman Mark Jones. “If you reference Chicago,” he said, “it’d be more similar. To Minneapolis? More corrupt.”

I have said many times since I return to Texas in 1990, what happened to “my Texas”, the one I grew up in and moved out of in 1977.

Who is Jerry Eversole? He is a County Commissioner in Harris County Texas that has been slammed with four federal indictments accusing him of accepting bribes and filing false income tax returns.

After demanding a quick and speedy trial after being indicted at the end of December 2010 and a three week trial in March 2011, the case went to the federal jury last Friday, March 25, 2011, with the defense led by fame Texas defense lawyer Rusty Hardin, deciding to put on NO defense. Rather it was the hint of the good ole boys and just friends helping friends like we do in Texas that Hardin rested on. Was it a gamble, yes per court analysts. Hardin of the fame J. Pierce Marshall and Anna Nicole Smith Probate fight way back in the early nineties, decided to take the same position that Steve Sadow did with Howard K. Stern in California. Very simply put, the U. S. government did not put on a case that Hardin felt was based on facts and so no defense other than friends do favors for friends in his closing arguments was his choice as a defense for Jerry Eversole.

The Houston Chronicle article also mentioned one of our old friends, Judge Tony Lindsay and the hot water her husband Jon Lindsay landed in 1993. That’s the year six-term Harris County Judge Jon Lindsay called it quits after being indicted for perjury, accused of lying on a campaign finance report and being accused by a federal convict of accepting a bribe to reroute a county road to boost the prospects of a housing development. The perjury indictments eventually were thrown out, and no criminal charges resulted from the bribery allegation. Still, Lindsay suffered a battering at the hands of then-County Attorney Mike Driscoll, who filed suit to remove the judge from office. Even that, however, was not enough to keep him out of office, as Lindsay went on to represent northern Harris County in the state Senate from 1996-2006.

The jury deliberated two hours on Friday and returned this morning and is deliberating again on the charges of alleged bribes cited by prosecutors included $17,000 Eversole received in landscaping, $30,000 in antique firearms, and $63,000 to pay off his mortgage. Eversole also was charged with filing false income tax returns in connection with the benefits.

Jerry Eversole’s friend Michael Surface also was indicted in December and is expected to go to trial in October. Defense attorneys maintain that prosecutors are “criminalizing” a 30-year friendship.

The other thing that caught my attention is the Judge Sharon Keller ongoing problems with the Texas state congress trying to impeach her and there has been another charge against her with the State Bar to disbar her, she was fined $100,000.00 by the Texas Ethics Commission, the highest ever fine, Jerry Eversole holds the second highest ever levied at a record $75,000 against him for campaign finance violations. If convicted Eversole could receive a maximum of 21 years in prison and $700,000 in fines.

Is this the beginning of cleaning up the Texas politics of hey friends help friends, or will it be business as usual and Jerry Eversole will walk this week?

Read the indictment and other papers filed before this quick trial and tell us if you think Eversole will walk?

12-20-10-Indictment (262)
12-28-10-Protective-Order (259)
1-10-11 Eversole Motion Limine (421)
1-11-11-Order-Allow-Additional-Motions (246)
1-11-11-Order-Setting-Deadline-Pretrial-Motions (241)
1-18-11-Order-Deny-Eversole-Request-Contact-Surface (247)
1-19-11-Motion-Severance-Trial.pdf (95)
1-24-11 Surface Motion Continuance (295)
1-24-11-USA-Response-Surface-Motion-Countinuance (237)
1-26-11-Surface-Reply-Continuance (365)
1-27-11-Order-Granting-Severance (247)
2-7-11-Order-Setting-Deadlines (250)
2-9-11-Eversole-Opposition-USA-Motion-Discovery (243)
2-9-11-USA-Motion-Discovery (270)
2-15-11-Eversole-Motion-Disclosure-Evidence (241)
2-16-11-Order-Granting-Part-Discovery (244)
2-17-11-Order-Granting-Motion-Disclosure (242)
2-28-11-USA-Trial-Memorandum (263)
3-6-11 USA Motion Limine (248)
3-8-11-Eversole-Response-USA-Motion-Limine (249)

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©Rose Turner
March 28, 2011
All Rights Reserved, do not reproduce in whole or in part without the express written consent of the author.

The expressions in this blog article are based on the opinions of Rose Turner or our featured authors, please remember we are not lawyers and those opinions expressed here are each of our individual opinions and should not be taken as legal advice and/or legal opinions. The comments following this blog article are the opinions and sole property of the blog site members and do not necessarily reflect those of the site owners. If comments to this or any other articles are not related to the article or does not meet the terms of use for Rose Speaks, they will be removed by the moderators.

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Tags: "criminalizing" a 30-year friendship, $17 thousand Eversole received in landscaping, $30 thousand in antique firearms, accepting bribes, alleged bribes, and $63 thousand to pay off his mortgage, Anna Nicole Smith, Anna Nicole Smith trials, campaign finance violations, charged with filing false income tax returns, Chicago, cleaning up the Texas politics, Eversole could receive $700 thousand in fines, Eversole could receive a maximum of 21 years in prison and $700 thousand in fines, Eversole maximum 21 years in prison, fame Texas defense lawyer, fame Texas defense lawyer Rusty Hardin, federal jury, filing false income tax returns, four federal indictments, friends helping friends, Harris County Attorney Mike Driscoll, Harris County County Commissioner, High Profile Trials, hint of the good ole boys, Houston Chronicle, Howard K Stern, J. Pierce Marshall, Jerry Eversole, Jerry Eversole charged with filing false income tax returns, Jerry Eversole Harris County Commissioner, Jerry Eversole Trial, Jon Lindsay, Jon Lindsay represent northern Harris County in the state Senate, Judge Sharon Keller, Judge Tony Lindsay, Mark Jones, Michael Surface, Minneapolis, northern Harris County in the state Senate from 1996-2006, retired Judge Tony Lindsay, Rice University, Rice University political science chairman, Rice University political science chairman Mark Jones, Rusty Hardin, Rusty Hardin Esq., Sharon Keller fined $100 thousand by the Texas Ethics Commission, six-term Harris County Judge Jon Lindsay, Steve Sadow Esq., Texas Ethics Commission, Texas Ethics Commission fined Eversole $75 thousand

A PUBLIC WARNING is the lightest disciplinary action the State Commission on Judicial Conduct could take other than dismissing the complaint which the Commission chose not to do.

At first you think “PUBLIC WARNING”, big deal. Don’t get me wrong I think the voters should decide Judge Sharon Keller’s fate, not the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

However, after reading the nineteen page “PUBLIC WARNING” you go “ouch”, the Commission denied all of the Motions filed by Keller’s attorney, Charles “Chip” Babcock, and then listed ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN things Judge Sharon Keller did wrong and did not state one thing she did right. The worse of this is that she said she would do it again. She knew the U. S. Supreme Court had issued a temporary Habeas Corpus earlier in the day. What seems to be the most damaging to me is that she did not tell her fellow judges what happened the next day during a conference. One Judge, Cathy Cochran, even brought up the after 5 PM filing procedure and Keller never told her fellow justices of her decision the night before. Two employees went to Keller and are quoted as saying they “believed that he, “Marty” TCCA General Counsel Edward Marty, could not talk to a different judge about the communication because it would have been going behind the Presiding Judge’s [Keller] back and would have been disloyal to her.”

Judge Keller admitted that the two people in charge that day in the Clerk’s office had never been trained on Execution day procedures and that she did not tell them to call the judge on duty that day, Judge Cheryl Johnson. Judge Cheryl Johnson as well as Marty and Acosta said they would have accepted the late filing after 5 PM. In fact they were all present until 7 PM and it would have been easy for them to handle the request and paperwork. TCCA General Counsel Edward Marty and TCCA deputy clerk Abel Acosta felt, “they had been given their marching orders” and could not take a late filing. Because of Keller’s action the U. S. Supreme Court could not accept a last minute filing, because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had not denied the stay of execution and they can only take a case once all avenues in state courts have been exhausted.

What I found stunning is that Keller left her office at 3:45 P. M., some reports say it was to meet a plumber at her home. Keller however kept in touch with her office with the last call at about 4:59 PM the Commission public warning said; “”Judge Keller asked Marty why the clerk’s staff should be made to remain after hours for lawyers who cannot get their work done on time.” The Commission found however that the Texas Defense Service lawyers had in fact had computer problems that day and even asked if they could fax or email the Motion for Stay of Execution so that would open the door for them to then go to the U. S. Supreme Court.

the State Commission on Judicial Conduct found that Judge Keller by her actions, “constituents willful or persistent conduct that is clearly inconsistent with the proper performance of her duties as a judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals”.

The out of Fort Worth Texas caught up to Keller’s attorney, Charles “Chip” Babcock while he was vacationing in Canada and Babcock is quoted as saying; “[he was] ‘shocked and disappointed’ by the findings and said that Keller is considering an appeal.”

“It is likely that Judge Keller will appeal this ruling but a final decision has not yet been made,” Babcock said. “The public warning is the least severe sanction that the commission can make. The problem with the opinion is that the findings that the commission has made does not comport with the overwhelming evidence in the case.”

Babcock tole the Texas based website the Statesman.com; “It is perhaps not surprising that the same commission that made the charges finds them now to be valid despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” said her lawyer, Chip Babcock. “Judge Keller looks forward to challenging this decision.”

In other news on Judge Keller, the one hundred thousand dollar fine against Judge Keller issued by the Texas Ethics Commission for Keller’s failure to disclose over 2.4 million dollar in assets is also under appeal by Keller. That 2. 4 million in undisclosed assets were uncovered and corrected by Keller, when Keller asked for Texas taxpayers to pay her legal fees for Babcock. It would appear the Sharon Keller saga in Texas will be ongoing for now. Keller is up for reelection in November 2012.

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©Rose Turner
July 17, 2010
All Rights Reserved, do not reproduce in whole or in part without the express written consent of the author.

The expressions in this blog article are based on the opinions of Rose Turner or our featured authors, please remember we are not lawyers and those opinions expressed here are each of our individual opinions and should not be taken as legal advice and/or legal opinions. The comments following this blog article are the opinions and sole property of the blog site members and do not necessarily reflect those of the site owners.

Please also read our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.

Tags: Alma Lagarda esq., Austin Texas, Charles "Chip" Babcock, Chief Justice Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, constituents persistent conduct, constituents willful conduct, constituents willful or persistent conduct, David Dow esq., disloyal to Judge Keller, Dorinda Fox, Fort Texas, Greg Wiercioch esq., Habeas Corpus, High Profile Trials, Honarble Sharon Keller, Judge Berchelmann, Judge Cathy Cochran, Judge Cheryl Johnson, Judge Sharon Keller, Judge Tom Price, Keller fined one hundred thousand dollars, Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, PUBLIC WARNING, PUBLIC WARNING issued against Judge Keller, Special Counsel John J. McKetta III, Star Telegram, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, TCCA, TCCA deputy clerk Abel Acosta, TCCA General Counsel Edward Marty, Texas Criminal Appeals Court, Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Judge Cochran, Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Judge Johnson, Texas Defender Service, Texas Defense Service, Texas Ethics Commission, Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Travis County Texas, U. S. Supreme Court, Writ of habeas corpus

DISCLAIMER: I do not believe in the death penalty. However, I don’t lobby for it to be overturned I just hope I could stick to my belief even if faced with someone I love being killed. Many people have told me that if “that happened to you, your mind would change and you would be pro-killing by the state”. I hope not, I remember a couple in Louisiana whose young daughter had been murdered and after the man was convicted they plead with the court not to set a death sentence because they did not believe in state killings. That case continues to stick out to me of going through with what you believe in, even in the most horrid of situations. Second Texas has more convicted felons in jail and being killed by the state then any other state. In my opinion that is because Texas has converted to “prisons for profit”. It is like a resort, private companies run most of Texas prisons and have to show a profit. How do they do that? The courts keep the prisons full.

Now back to Judge Sharon Keller, former Dallas County prosecutor turned into the equal of the Supreme Court of Texas which decides Civil Cases, as the top judge for the Criminal Appeals Court. In other words she is not defendant friendly. Judge Keller was elected in 1994 and road in on the coat tail, of then governor George W. Bush, when the republicans swept into power including the highest courts of our state. In Texas we elect judges all the way to our highest courts, they are never appointed unless one is needed to complete a term for a judge no longer on the bench. Most of us split our votes in Texas, and most vote on judges never reading who they are or what they stand for. You can bet in 2012 when Keller comes up for reelection that Texans will know who she is. So what two ethics commissions have not been able to do, the voters can if they choose disrobe Judge Keller.

Here is brief synopsis and with links to the filings and news sources covering Judge Sharon Keller and what is going on with her professional life. In Texas you can’t get a better soap opera.

She is battling on two fronts at the same time one is “The State Commission on Judicial Conduct” and the other is the “Texas Ethics Commission”.

The Texas Ethics Commission recently fined Judge Keller $100,000 for a no no, we will get into that in this article because this is what caught my eye as something glaring that as a former prosecutor which standards would Keller apply to anyone facing her with a last appeal in the Texas criminal justice system for the same thing she did.

The Texas Ethics Commission decision to level the largest fine ever handed down of $100k. However, while going to the hearing on the other charges the same day, Keller announced she would fight the fine. “Keller’s attorney, Ed Shack of Austin, said Keller “is very disappointed at the excessive penalty” assessed by the commission and plans to appeal. The appeal, which Keller has 30 days to file, will likely result in a trial before a district judge in Travis County.” Among the holdings and business activities that Keller failed to disclose, according to the commission, were: Eight interests in real property that were valued at more than $2.4 million in 2006 and at $2.8 million in 2007. Most of the property is in Dallas. Keller also failed to disclose between 100 and 499 shares of stock in a business and up to nine sources of income from interest, dividends, royalties and rents that totaled at least $121,500 in 2007.”

Judge Keller’s excuse when caught in May 2009 and amended her financial disclosures to address all of this was her dad did it not her. Duh???? Is that like the old school kid try of “My dog ate my homework”? “Keller filed an amended financial statement in May 2009 to disclose real estate assets and other holdings that she had not listed in previous filings. In the revised statement, she said she was not aware of the holdings because her elderly father, a Dallas businessman who managed the property, had not told her about them.”

However on the same day, June 18, 2010, in front of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct her attorney for those proceedings, Charles “Chip” Babcock a partner of Jackson Walker in both Dallas and Houston “countered that the state’s highest appeals court judge is the victim of a “pack of lies” designed to force her from the bench. Babcock went on to say that, “The appeals court judge acted properly in her handling of the situation and urged the commission to drop the charges against her. Babcock contended that allegations against Keller have been stoked in the press by death penalty opponents and other Keller detractors who are attempting to “drive her off the bench.”” Babcock used the final minutes of his argument to tell commissioners of “the unspeakable toll this has taken on Judge Keller – personally, reputationally and financially.”

Do what??? So she is going to force Texas to pay for more hearings and not pay the $100k fine and get on with her life? I find it interesting that she is fighting one set of complaints vowing to go to trial in Austin and on the same day in a different trial she is pleading that investigations against her had cost her “personally, reputationally and financially.”

The following is part of the exchanges in front to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct between Babcock on behalf of Judge Keller and Austin attorney Mike McKetta, who is a shareholder in Austin’s Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody law firm, for the State of Texas with a couple of comments from the commissioners.

Babcock said he did not believe the commission had given Keller a fair hearing. To which Commissioner Tom Cunningham, a Houston Texas attorney responded, “Isn’t it ironic that’s what Mr. Richard was asking?”

Previously earlier this year the Special Master, David Berchelmann, Jr., appointed by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct said, roughly in his report and recommendations basically that “Yes, her behavior was bad, but lawyers who are public defenders, acted badly, too.”

Paraphrasing here the Gamso blog says; “Anyway, although Keller says she’d do it again, that’s obviously a lie. And since she wouldn’t do it again, and since she’s not wholly responsible for what happened and didn’t actually violate a technical rule (just an obligation) but merely acted badly, she shouldn’t be punished. Besides, she lied when she said she wouldn’t do it again, so she’s learned her lesson.”

Prior to this hearing on June 18, 2010, Judge Keller took a different attack, she’s been victimized Babcock wrote in filings before the hearing that this course of events would not seem out of place in the old Soviet bloc, where show trials were not really trials, but were degradation ceremonies staged to depose officials who deviated from party doctrine”.

Yea now Texas is equal to the Soviet bloc, you got to love these high profile and well paid lawyers spin on these things.

Grits for Breakfast blog said of the hearing that; “Keller’s attorney Chip Babcock spent the majority of his time (80% by one commissioner’s estimate) criticizing the Texas Defender Service and particularly attorney David Dow for mendacity and seeking to railroad Judge Keller out of office. He also criticized the Texas Civil Rights Project for relying on inaccurate media reports in drafting its complaint to the SCJC. These charges had taken an “almost unspeakable toll” on Keller said Babcock “personally, professionally, and again the term financially,” adding that all the allegations against her are a “pack of lies.” The entire proceeding, he opined, was a “calculated strategy by some people to take a popularly elected judge and drive her from the bench.”

McKetta for the State kept the attention of the few news media and bloggers who attended the June 18 hearing with a Power Point Presentation showing a time line of Keller’s actions.

“Both attorneys were on their A games, Grits for Breakfast blogger wrote, but Babcock suffered in a couple of key moments from what they call “bad facts,” particularly when he claimed Keller didn’t really mean she would do the same thing again, that she isn’t a “recidivist,” but Justice Jan Patterson read back to him Keller’s exact words from the testimony transcript to show he’d mischaracterized the Q&A and the examiner’s interpretation was accurate. One of the public, non-attorney members, Commissioner Janelle Shephard said she saw “shocking dysfunction in the court,” with little training or accountability. “Where does the buck stop in this whole fiasco?” she asked. Another Commissioner, Ann Bradford said, “This has to be a tremendous breakdown in communication.” Yet another of the 13 members of the commission, Karry Matson, blamed both sides for “dropping the ball.” McKetta said he was particularly perturbed by Keller’s earlier testimony that she would do the same thing today. “That is a serious problem that needs attention,” he said during the hearing.

Babcock on behalf of Judge Keller argued that the “State Commission on Judicial Conduct did a poor job of investigating complaints against Keller in connection with a death-row inmate’s case; “I think the commission has failed in every step of the way in this.” Yeppers Babcock said that in front of the very commission which will decide Keller’s fate on June 18, 2010. Babcock said “defense lawyers failed in their actions to file a brief on time and now are trying to blame Keller. It would be “enormously dangerous” if the Commission on Judicial Conduct, he said, sanctioned Keller based on distortions pushed by those with a political agenda.”

Babcock criticized the judicial conduct commission for basing its charges on “lies” that he alleged David Dow, the TDS litigation director and a professor at the University of Houston Law Center alleging that TDS concocted a story that they had multiple computer crashes on that day as they were trying to get the documents to the CCA, that attorneys had called the court and pleaded with Keller to keep the clerk’s office open but that she refused three times.

Here are the two things that have a lot of Texans finally talking about our judicial system. One is this hearing that Babcock is Keller’s lead attorney was based on a last minute appeal from a Texas death row inmate, who would have been executed at a later date anyway, because the U. S. Supreme Court had agreed to take a case from Kentucky that was like the one in Texas. That bothers me in a time where succession talk is fluid in Texas that the top judge would not honor the U. S. Supreme Court as having control over her or the Criminal Court of Appeals even for one day. However at the hub of this is not the U. S. Supreme Court’s granting a hearing on a similar case but instead that Keller declined to allow her court clerk’s office to stay open late on Sept. 25, 2007, to accommodate requests from public defenders who were readying a last-minute stay of execution. The appeal wasn’t received and the inmate, Michael Wayne Richard, was executed.

As I said Richard under Texas law would have been executed eventually anyway but is that a reason to say hey the outcome would be the same so what if the U. S. Supreme Court had issued a decision earlier in the day on Sept. 25, 2007 granted a hearing on another case the same day. After all the U. S. Supreme Court is NOT Texas.

One news source stated it this way: “The Keller investigation has received attention well beyond the state and has been cited frequently by critics who claim that judges in Texas, one of the nation’s busiest executioners, don’t handle death-penalty cases with sufficient care. A Republican and avowed law-and-order former prosecutor, Ms. Keller was first voted onto the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, in 1994. She became presiding judge in 2000. Defense attorneys have filed hundreds of complaints against the judge with the judicial-conduct commission over the years, but she has defended her tenure.”

Special examiners retained by the judicial conduct commission last year charged Judge Keller with “willful and persistent” misconduct, a charge that can result in removal from office. The commission could dismiss the charges. It adjourned Friday, June 18 2010, without ruling.

The special Special Master Judge Berchelmann had previously wrote in his brief that Keller should not be impeached that. “Her refusal to keep the clerk’s office open late was “highly questionable, and she could have better communicated the procedure for filing late motions with an on-call judge. There is a valid reason why many in the legal community are not proud of Judge Keller’s actions.”

When the call came asking , the court’s general counsel called Keller – not Johnson, the on duty night judge for September 25, 2007, saying he thought it was an administrative matter. At Keller’s direction, the Texas Defenders Service was told that the clerk’s office would close at 5 p.m. But the defense lawyers did not call other judges to file the papers directly, which is a standard legal procedure. Keller did not instruct the staff to either let the on call Judge Johnson know about the late-filing request or let the defense lawyers know they should call Johnson. Neither did Keller acknowledge her phone conversation to colleagues the next day when they wondered aloud why no pleadings had been filed.

Then there is my “dad did it not me” situation, which could still on an outside chance cause criminal charges against Judge Keller be filed over misstatements in her financial disclosures that listed the earnings of Keller. The fine and finding by the Ethics Commission is disturbing to me in that the allegations that Keller had reporting lapses that were discovered after Keller asked a court to pay for her lawyers while failing to disclose millions in income and assets.

Again yeppers, this ex-prosecutor non-defendant friendly judge wanted the Texas tax payers to not only pay the costs for all of these ongoing hearings, but to also pay her legal fees out of our pockets. How do you forget and misplace over 2.5 million dollars of assets when you need the tax payers to foot your legal bills?

Will Judge Keller hold herself to the same standard of “blame” as she holds common criminals, I doubt it, she is after all a judge and not a common criminal.

In spite of all of these troubles Judge Keller recently told PBS in an interview of which she wrote the majority opinion in the Roy Criner case, ruling that new tests which showed DNA evidence in the rape and murder case was not Criner’s didn’t warrant granting Criner a new trial. In that interview with regards to the new DNA evidence Judge Keller said, “At best, he established that he might be innocent.”

She even took a swipe at witnesses and jurors; yes do your civic duty and Judge Keller can pass some blame to you if she needs to. In the PBS interview this spring, Judge Keller said; “We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent. We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important. When witnesses testify, and when jurors return a verdict, they need to know that they can’t come back later and change their minds. . . DNA evidence in this case did not prove that he didn’t commit the offense.” That translated to me that she cannot overturn a Jury verdict with new evidence but the jury may have made a mistake. Am I the only one scratching my head on this one?

Keller may reach even Washington D. C. fame in the confirmation hearing of Elena Kagan as to why the U. S. Supreme Court should be mindful and use Keller as an example of what NOT to do.

Politics Daily out of Washington D. C. said; “Kagan should use the forum, and the opportunity, to educate the committee and the rest of the nation about what “judicial empathy” really means — and also what it doesn’t mean. During her confirmation hearing, the nominee can do that — quite quickly, easily and proactively — simply by recounting the shocking story of Judge Sharon Keller of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Judge Keller (known to some as “Killer Keller” even before the incident in question and heavily fined since for disclosure violations) has justifiably become the poster child for judicial callousness toward a condemned man…”

Would all of you like it if we put up the pleadings and answers in Judge Keller cases before two commission on conduct for you to download and read?

My bet is Judge Keller will end up paying the $100k fine, the Commission for Judicial Conduct will not suggest impeaching her, which means it will be left up to “we the people of Texas” to decide in 2012 Keller’s fate. At least voters will recognize her name on the ballot.

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©Rose Turner
June 30, 2010
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